I see a lot of people writing every day on Facebook or on their blogs in November about the things they are Thankful for – I feel like we do a pretty good job of that all year long here at The Knitting Nest. We help with many groups all year long and this year has been a stellar year for donations.
We have gotten a MOUNTAIN of knitted and crocheted scarves for The Texas Special Olympics – two of them, by SuJo Plassman, are particularly gorgeous and have gotten lots of attention!! We have a new batch of red and grey yarn and the deadline is not until December 30th so keep ‘em coming!
We now have a little Christmas tree in the store adorned with names of foster children from Texas Mentor. Many of these children are in homes that a couple of extra presents would be a great help so please take a minute when you are in the store and see if one of these children call out to you! Please take a minute and look at their website. And while I’m talking about it, if YOU, or someone you know, are interested in becoming foster parents please let me know. They need homes for all ages of children and some of them are in desperate situations.
And, finally, this morning we got our “adopted” family from Saint Louise House!! This was such a wonderful experience last year and I am expecting everyone to do just as wonderful a job again this year! This year is going to be a little more challenging….we have gotten a family of three this year. The mom is 51 and all she asked for was a Kohls gift card and a Giant Crockpot so I figured we can do the same thing we did last year: The store will buy the crockpot – YOU GUYS bring in a recipe on a 3×5 recipe card for something your family loves cooked in the crockpot and the dry ingredients to make it all in a big ziplock bag with the recipe name written on the outside. Or next time you are at the grocery store buy a $10 gift card. Last year we were able to give our family almost $200 in grocery gift cards to go along with the HUGE box of food! Which brings me to the challenging part of our family – they have two children – a 17 year old young man and an 8 year old girl. The 17 year old has asked for a football, a gift card from Kohls or a refill card for Virgin mobile. The 8 year old has asked for art supplies, animal key chains for her backpack or a Target gift card. I am hoping that three wonderful knitters or crocheters will step forward and volunteer to make each of the family members a really cool hat and scarf. And I will have three stockings in the store again this year for little things so maybe small things will appeal to someone too! I am going to write to area businesses again and hopefully we can score another Christmas dinner from Bill Miller. I am also going to try and get a large ArtBin storage container donated – so all you crafty people look through your supplies and bring in any UNUSED things that we can fill up the container with for the little girl.
So please, take the next 40 days thinking about how lucky you are that you never had to make the decision to stay with a man who was physically or mentally abusing you so you would have a place to live – or leave with the clothes on your back in the middle of the night – with nowhere to go – to protect your children.
Your life may not be perfect, but remember, it sure could be a hell of a lot worse.